edge of the world.
It all looked familiar to Trixie, as impossible as that might be. And then she realized it was. This was exactly how her father drew hell.
As mushers hooked dogs to their sleds, a crowd gathered around the chute. All the people looked immense and overstuffed in their outside gear. Children held their hands out to the dogs to sniff, getting tangled in the lead lines.
“Andi. Andi?”
When Trixie didn't answer - she forgot that was the name she'd been given this time - Jen tapped her on the shoulder. Standing beside her was a Yup'ik Eskimo boy not much older than Trixie. He had a wide face the color of hazelnuts, and amazingly, he wasn't wearing a hat. “Willie's going to take you up to Tuluksak,” Jen said.
“Thanks,” Trixie answered.
The boy wouldn't look her in the eye. He turned away and started
walking, which Trixie assumed was the cue that she was supposed to follow. He stopped at a snow machine, nodded at it, and then walked away from her.
Willie disappeared quickly into the dark ring of night outside the flood lamp. Trixie hesitated beside the snow machine, not sure what she was supposed to do. Follow him? Figure out how to turn this thing on herself?
Trixie touched one of the handlebars. The snow machine smelled like exhaust, like her father's lawn mower.
She was about to look for an On switch when Willie returned, holding an oversized winter parka with black wolf fur sewn into the hood. Still averting his glance, he held it out to her. When she didn't take it, he mimed putting it on.
There was still heat trapped inside. Trixie wondered whom he'd taken this jacket from, if he or she was shivering now in the cold. Her hands were lost in the sleeves, and when she pulled up the hood, it blocked the wind from her face.
Willie climbed onto the snow machine and waited for Trixie to do the same. She glanced at him - what if he didn't know his way to Tuluksak? Even if he did, what was she going to do when everyone realized Trixie wasn't the person they were expecting?
Most important, how was she supposed to get on the back of this thing without having to lean up against this boy?
With all of their layers, it was a tight fit. Trixie pushed herself back to the very edge of the seat, holding on to the rails at the sides with her mittened hands. Willie pulled the rip cord to start the machine and they groaned forward slowly, to keep the dogs from startling. He maneuvered around the chute and then gunned the engine, so that they flew across the ice. If it was cold standing around, it was fifty times colder on a snow machine blasting at full throttle. Trixie couldn't imagine not having the parka; as it was, she was shivering inside it and had curled her hands into fists.
The headlamp on the front of the machine cut a tiny visible triangle in front of them. There was no road whatsoever. There were no street signs, no traffic lights, no exit ramps. “Hey,” Trixie yelled into the wind. “Do you know where you're going?” Willie didn't answer.
Trixie grasped onto the handholds more firmly. It was dizzying, going at this speed without being able to see. She listed to the left as Willie drove up a bank, through a narrow copse of trees, and then back out onto a finger of the frozen river.
“My name's Trixie,” she said, not because she expected an answer but because it kept her teeth from chattering. After she spoke, she remembered that she was supposed to be someone else.
“Well, it's Trixie, but they call me Andi.” God, she thought. Could I sound any more stupid if I tried?
The wind blew into Trixie's eyes, which - as they started tearing - froze shut. She found herself huddling forward, her forehead nearly touching Willie's back. Heat rose off him in waves.
As they drove, she pretended that she was lying prone in the back of her father's pickup, feeling it vibrate underneath her as he bounced into the parking lot of the drive-in. The metal flatbed pressed against her cheek was still warm from a whole day of sun. They would eat so much popcorn that her mother would be able to smell it on their clothes even after she'd put them through the wash.
A frigid blast of air hit her full in the face. “Are we going to be there soon?” Trixie asked, and then, at Willie's silence,
“Do you even speak English?”
To her surprise, he ground the brakes, until the snow machine came to a stop. Willie turned around, still avoiding her gaze.
“It's fifty-five miles,” he said. “Are you going to yap the whole time?”
Stung, Trixie turned away and noticed the eerie light that had spilled onto the surface of the river up ahead. She traced it to its overhead origin - a wash of pink and white and green that reminded her of the smoke trails left behind by fireworks on the Fourth of July.
Who knew that when you cut a slit in the belly of the night sky it bled color?
“That's beautiful,” Trixie whispered.
Willie followed her gaze. “Qiuryaq.”
She didn't know if that meant Shut up or Hold on or maybe even I'm sorry. But this time when he started the sled, she tilted her face to the Northern Lights. Looking up here was hypnotic and less harrowing than trying to squint at the imaginary road. Looking up here, it was almost easy to imagine they were nearly home. 7
Max Giff-Reynolds had made a career out of focusing on the things most people never saw: a carpet fiber trapped on the inside edge of a victim's coat, a grain of sand left at a crime scene that was indigenous to a certain part of the country, the dust of a coffee grinder on the makings of a dirty bomb. As one of two hundred forensic microscopists in the country, he was in high demand. Chances were that Mike Bartholemew would never have
